The Art Practice program offers a fully interdisciplinary approach to an MFA degree. Artists in the program are not defined or separated by medium or discipline. In this post-conceptual, post-studio era, artists pursue their practice by engaging an idea first, and then developing a plan that may involve a combination of media, technologies and techniques, some of which are linked to traditional art media, and some of which find the artist working with technologies and industries not usually associated with art-making.

We want to help prepare artists to feel secure in their ability to find ways to produce works of art using traditional and nontraditional media in both traditional and nontraditional settings. To accomplish this, we bring together a carefully selected, small group of MFA candidates who will devote three successive summers and the two intervening years to a program in which they will engage with artists, designers, art historians and museum curators, including Vito Acconci, Cory Arcangel, Dara Birnbaum, Kathy Brew, Eric and Heather ChanSchatz, Laura F. Gibellini, Liam Gillick, Claire Gilman, Thyrza Nichols Goodeve, Natalie Jeremijenko, Daniel Kunitz, Glenn Ligon, Steven Henry Madoff, Douglas Nickel, Martha Rosler, Tim Rollins, Stefan Saffer, Sarah Sharp, Lorna Simpson, Jovana Stokic, Philippe Vergne, Carrie Mae Weems, Robin Winters and Terry Winters.

Like the nature of the work we hope to help students produce, this program itself is a work in progress, and will be continuously refined as a function of the experience of all its participants. This is an exciting time for us, and another example of why SVA is seen as an art college for the 21st century.